Lecturer’s Critique of Whiteness Crossed the Line Into Harassment, State Investigation Finds

A lecturer in American Indian studies at San Diego State University harassed and discriminated against a student because she is white, accusing her of adopting a “white savior” complex and trying to look Native American, according to a report by the California State Department of Justice.

The report, issued last month, concluded that the lecturer, Oscar (Ozzie) Monge, retaliated against Crystal Sudano after she complained about his conduct and challenged his research.

Mr. Monge has denied discriminating against his former student. He is preparing an appeal, but said he isn’t authorized to discuss the case with outside parties while it is under investigation.

In a confidential 51-page report obtained by The Chronicle, Christine B. Mersten, the supervising deputy attorney general, focused overwhelmingly on a series of private Facebook messages and emails between Mr. Monge and Ms. Sudano that began shortly before she enrolled in his class, “American Indians Through Film, Television, and Popular Culture.”

Ms. Sudano eventually withdrew from the class, saying she was upset and stressed out by the exchanges and worried Mr. Monge would dock her grade because of the tension between them.

The report, which followed a six-month investigation that included interviews with 14 witnesses, found that Mr. Monge’s messages to her demonstrated his “animus toward white people.”

In a Facebook message to The Chronicle, Ms. Sudano said she left nearly every class feeling “upset, angry, and defensive.”

Mr. Monge, she said, “speaks incessantly about white people and whiteness and uses terms like ‘whitesplain’ in class. He teaches that white people are ignorant and can’t be taught.”

The investigator sided with Ms. Sudano in three of the four complaints she brought against Mr. Monge: that he discriminated against her on the basis of race, racially harassed her, and retaliated against her. The investigation did not, however, find that he had discriminated against her on the basis of a disability. Ms. Sudano suffers from partial hearing loss and attention deficit disorder, the report said.

A university spokeswoman declined to speculate on whether Mr. Monge would be suspended or fired, saying the investigation is the first step in a continuing evaluation process that could include appeals and a review by the chancellor.

Ms. Sudano and Mr. Monge, who is Native American and Chicano, were acquaintances before she took his class, the report notes. She had organized protest rallies and participated in the Occupy San Diego movement in 2011. Their electronic conversations centered largely around the professor’s yearslong fight to persuade the university to scrap its Aztec warrior mascot, which he argues is based on white racism. His master’s thesis, completed in 2015, was titled “Fail, Montezuma! The Last Vestiges of an Obscured Yet Stubbornly Persistent Culture of Racism at San Diego State University.”

In November, the University Senate passed a resolution to retire the mascot after the student government had voted to keep it.

Many of the messages between the professor and student centered on his frustration over student support for the mascot.

He wrote that he was confused about how “damned white” the student government is. Ms. Sudano responded with an effort to explain shared governance by saying that “everyone, no matter how low on the totem pole,” has the right to share his or her opinion.

His response was, “Don’t use ‘totem pole.’ White people get the whole thing wrong, btw. The lowest part of the totem pole is a place of honor. The most experienced carver does that.”

That’s the kind of admonition that other students apparently were less offended by. On one student-rating site, he received overwhelmingly favorable reviews from students who pointed out that he was an easy grader but also taught them important lessons about racial prejudice.

“Occasionally you’ll have the students who are unwilling to put aside their biases to listen and understand what he says,” one student wrote, “but if you are willing to do that you’ll love this class!”

The report took issue with other messages to Ms. Sudano. In one, Mr. Monge suggested that a black member of the student government wasn’t supporting him because “I’ve been told by other black students that he’s more of an Uncle Tom.”

Native American students, he told her, “are preferring not to rock the boat so they can remain socially accepted and not risk scholarships and such.”

Social Critique or Personal Attack?

Tensions between Mr. Monge and Ms. Sudano grew when she began to investigate the mascot controversy to question whether the mascot was, as her professor contended, based on white supremacy. She wasn’t convinced.

A short time later, according to the report, Mr. Monge threatened to lower her grade because she had failed to turn in an assignment and missed several classes. Several students had missed the assignment and classes, but she was the only one who was explicitly told her grade would be lowered as a result, the report stated.

In a 10-page essay Mr. Monge submitted to the investigator, he tried to persuade her that he wasn’t prejudiced against white people but was taking on “whiteness” as a social construct, or way of thinking.

White supremacy is its accompanying ideology, he wrote. “It is quite easy to argue that whiteness is synonymous with evil,” he added in a sentence that was plucked from his essay and highlighted in her report as evidence of his alleged bias.

When he talks about whiteness, Mr. Monge wrote, “it’s not a critique of a person; it’s a critique of a hateful, harmful, destructive, and murderous social construct.”

The way the investigator saw it, the critiques were entirely personal.

She described how Mr. Monge questioned Ms. Sudano’s attire at a presentation of the Native American Student Alliance. He thought her braids and head scarf looked like she was trying to look Native; she said she had ridden her motorcycle and needed to keep her hair from blowing and her face warm.

Mr. Monge told her that motorcycle culture had appropriated from Native Americans and that she should have been more careful about how her attire would be interpreted. “I’ve seen more intentional stuff, where white women will come to powwows with fringed clothing and headbands and we’ll be all ‘wtf’ — but … we won’t say anything … we try to maintain our politeness and hospitality even in the face of rudeness.”

The “proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back,” according to the report, was when Mr. Monge cautioned Ms. Sudano against adopting a “white savior” approach in her interactions with Native students.

He told Ms. Sudano, who had admitted that she can be “pushy,” that she doesn’t listen to people. “And frankly, this is precisely the sort of behavior I don’t want you to bring with you if you meet with the Native students, to get all ‘white savior’ on them and tell them that they don’t know what they’re doing so … you’ll tell us. If you want to help, the first thing to do is listen. That’s frickn’ Ally Lesson #1. Listen. Listen. Listen.”

She responded that she was angry and had never been called a racist before. He said that wasn’t what he meant.

At this point, the report delves into definitions of “white savior.” The student said she’d found one online that described a white person who hides her racism by doing something good for minorities, who are too dumb to figure out how to do it themselves.

The investigator wasn’t able to find that definition, but offered one that referred to “a white person who acts to help non-white people, with the help in some contexts perceived to be self-serving.” In any case, she concluded, it was meant as an insult.

A campus spokeswoman, Jill Esterbrooks, said she could not discuss the details of the case, because it is under investigation. However, she added that the university “is committed to creating a learning environment where everyone is treated with respect and dignity. The university prohibits discriminatory behavior and harassment of any kind on campus, and takes allegations of misconduct by any member of the campus community very seriously.”

Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, and job training, as well as other topics in daily news. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineMangan, or email her at katherine.mangan@chronicle.com.